Conservatives, race and the chicken-and-egg question

2016/12/21 Leave a comment

Good column by Tasha Kheiriddin:

Are Conservatives more biased than other Canadian voters? They are, apparently — at least according to a recent Forum research poll on attitudes towards minorities.

The pollster asked 1,300 Canadians whether they had “favourable or unfavourable feelings” about a range of religious and racial groups, including Muslims, Jews, First Nations, South Asians and blacks. Respondents had a choice of three responses: “favourable feelings,” “unfavourable feelings” or “don’t know”. While four in 10 respondents overall expressed unfavourable feelings towards at least one group, that number rose to six in ten Conservative supporters, versus three in ten New Democrat, Liberal or Green voters.

Fifty-five per cent of Bloc Quebecois supporters also expressed these “unfavourable feelings”; 57 per cent of Quebecers did as well.

With regard to Quebec, the numbers are, unfortunately, not a surprise. The province’s long-standing fight to protect French culture from erosion by English and immigrant influences has long been tainted by expressions of xenophobia. In 1995, Premier Jacques Parizeau blamed “money and the ethnic vote” when his party lost its second referendum on separation. In 2007 the town of Hérouxville made international headlines for its “code of conduct”, which discouraged would-be immigrants from smelly cooking and helpfully reminded them that the “stoning of women in public” was unacceptable.

And in 2013, the PQ proposed a Charter of Values which would have banned the wearing of religious symbols by state employees, and which went so far as to include pictograms of verboten items, including kippas, turbans, crosses and headscarves.

When it comes to the expressions of bias by Conservative voters, however, the explanation seems somewhat murkier. Lorne Bozinoff, president of Forum research, suggested to the Toronto Star that the poll results might be linked to the party’s “dabbling” in identity politics, such as proposals by candidates Kellie Leitch and Stephen Blaney to screen immigrants for “Canadian values” or prevent them from voting while wearing a veil. “Whether they’re reacting to their base (of supporters) or they’re leading their base, there are those feelings,” Bozinoff said.

And that is the chicken-and-egg question. Are candidates like Leitch reacting to pre-existing opinion within the Conservative base, or fanning the flames to even greater heights? Are they trying to capture a ready base of support, or are they building one by rallying voters through identity politics?

open quote 761b1bWhile there exists a base of Conservative voters who hold anti-immigrant or anti-minority views, there aren’t enough of those voters to win power. But within the Conservative party itself, there might be enough of those voters to win the party leadership.

It’s a little of both. The Forum poll echoes sentiments expressed in previous research — such as an Ekos poll published last year which found that 41 per cent of Canadians thought “too many minorities” were immigrating to Canada. Broken down by party, 51 per cent of Conservative supporters held that view against 35 per cent of NDP voters and 32 per cent of Liberal voters holding that view — a clear difference that a candidate for the Conservative leadership mightchoose to target for political advantage.

And philosophical conservatives, as their name implies, traditionally seek to preserve the established order. Since the days of Edmund Burke, conservatives have been wary of rapid change and ‘progress’ for progress’ sake. So they tend to be more skeptical of immigration, particularly when immigrants come from faiths or ethnicities different from those of the majority population.

But conservatives also believe in liberty, the right to self-determination and freedom from tyranny and overbearing governments — something many immigrants are fleeing when they seek a better life on foreign shores. The challenge for the right is always in reconciling these beliefs while reining in xenophobic tendencies — which, when allowed to run amok in other places, have led to horrors such as the Holocaust, an evil even greater than the many left-wing revolutions conservatives condemn.

Here in multicultural Canada, it’s the responsibility of leaders of all party stripes to encourage cohesion rather than sow division. The 2015 federal election campaign revealed that doing so is also a surer path to government. While there exists a base of Conservative voters who hold anti-immigrant or anti-minority views, there aren’t enough of those voters to win power.

But within the Conservative party itself, there might be enough of those voters to win the party leadership. Which explains what we are seeing in the current Conservative race.

In the case of Leitch, this rhetoric rings particularly hollow for anyone who has followed her career. For decades — since her student politics days, in fact — Leitch was seen as hailing from the Red Tory wing of the then-Progressive Conservative party. People who have known and respected her a long time (this writer included) are mystified by her values pitch and sudden praise for Donald Trump — stuff that the Kellie we remember would never have said. Previous supporters and long-time friends, including former Senator Hugh Segal and head of the IRPP Graham Fox, have even distanced themselves from her campaign over her remarks.

The only way to explain Leitch’s abrupt U-turn into identity politics is that polls — and her campaign manager, Nick Kouvalis — encouraged her to go that route. But targeting anti-immigrant voters also means promoting their attitudes – and that is the truly objectionable part of the equation.

Sensible immigration policy does not mean demonizing differences, nor does it mean talking in code about “values”. It means correlating Canada’s labour needs with immigrants’ skills, ensuring that people who come here are equipped to succeed, not depend on the state, and showing compassion for those fleeing oppression and discrimination.

We already “screen” immigrants for those things. Calling for more is not sound policy. It’s just self-serving politics.

Source: Conservatives, race and the chicken-and-egg question

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Canadian politics are sexist. What are men going to do about it? 

2016/12/21 Leave a comment

Worth reflecting and acting upon:

A 2016 survey of 55 female parliamentarians from 39 countries found that 44.4 per cent had received threats of death, rape, beatings or abduction, and 65.5 per cent said they had “often” been subjected to humiliating sexist remarks from male colleagues. And, of course, we all know what happened toHillary.

Good ideas have been floated to address this hostility towards female politicians: last week, the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters created the Lift Her Upcampaign to challenge sexist bullying; and Notley believes we should be encouraging more women to enter politics. In the U.S., women are already responding to the 2016 presidential election by pursuing their own runs for office: since November, more than 4,500 of them have signed up for She Should Run, a new organization that trains women for public life. 

But a quick and simple solution is unlikely. The threats and harassment are bound to get worse before they get better. And what’s more: This isn’t women’s problem to fix. This one is up to men. Because men—and it is almost entirely men who’ve been targeting female politicians—are reacting to a very real change. As Don Braid wrote in the Calgary Herald, “Alberta has become a kind of social laboratory, unique in North America, to test whether a near-majority of women in a government caucus makes a change in style and substance. The verdict is already in—they do, as shown both by Notley’s conciliatory style and the NDP’s advancement of women and minorities.”

There are some men who find this progress very, very threatening. For them, the advancement of women, people of colour and LGBT people in politics and other arenas feels like a personal attack. It feels like what has been rightfully and unquestionably theirs for so long is now being stolen away.

American author and academic Michael Kimmel calls this “aggrieved entitlement.” In his book, Angry White Men, which came out in 2013 but seems even more relevant now, Kimmel surveys the growing rage among neo-Nazis, gamers, right wing talk radio hosts and men’s rights activists who define their masculinity and manhood in terms of dominance and power and who believe in their “God-given right” to rule the world.

Female politicians from the right, left and middle have been attacked. Those who identify as feminists have been harassed as well as those who don’t. Their haters simply don’t like that these women are smarter, more powerful and more successful than they are. Given the narrow way they define their manhood, it’s emasculating.

To put it in terms those guys will understand, what they really don’t like is that these women have bigger balls than they do. (Because whether or not you agree with the politics of these women, you have to recognize the guts and perseverance and hard work it takes to run for office.)

Men who believe in equality need to champion the idea of women in power and, more significantly, they need to model for other men that they are respectful of and comfortable with female leaders and female bosses. Michael Kimmel suggests we might start to address white male rage by creating a new definition of masculinity doesn’t depend upon male supremacy, but instead embraces egalitarianism and a true meritocracy.

It turns out that inclusion and social equality are good for white guys, too. Men in marriages where the responsibility for domestic chores and financial support are more evenly shared report higher levels of happiness and less depression. And societies that care for the rights and well-being of all their citizens tend to be the ones that provide a social safety net to protect those, including white men, who have lost jobs or feel disempowered.

Over the last several decades, women have redefined their roles, moving into fields that were previously off-limits, like politics. Now it’s up to men—white, straight men in particular—to redefine theirs. What does it mean to be a man when it’s no longer just a man’s world?

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Tories want to cut red tape for skilled immigrants. What else is new? – Macleans.ca

2016/12/21 Leave a comment

An overview of where the Conservative leadership candidates stand on foreign credential recognition – no much new for a perennial issue.

The evaluation of IRCC’s efforts under the Conservatives, which were largely information, path-finding and referral services, does not indicate a strong correlation with improved outcomes for foreign-trained professions (Evaluation of the Foreign Credentials Referral Office (FCRO)):

A large part of Justin Trudeau’s campaign focused on reforming the Conservatives’ policies, but that’s not the case when it comes to skilled immigrants. Erin Tolley, a political science researcher at the University of Toronto who focuses on diversity in Canada, said the Liberals have been largely silent on the issue. Their platform didn’t include promises on immigrant skill utilization, and all they’ve done is tweak economic immigration policy. Tolley says it’s Conservative governments that are most active on skilled immigration reform because they see it as an economic issue.

That’s why when Conservative leadership hopefuls nearly unanimously said Canada needs more skilled immigrants, I had to know where they stood on reaccreditation. The campaigns of Kellie Leitch, Maxime Bernier, and Lisa Raitt did not make their candidates available for an interview, but nine other candidates agree that the federal government has a role to play in tackling the problem.

Nearly every candidate I spoke with said Canada needs to sharpen its focus on economic immigration. Former immigration minister Chris Alexander wants 70 per cent of Canada’s immigrants to be selected on the basis of skills, education, and language, rather than family reunification. Under the Harper government, that number hovered in the mid-60 percentiles, while the Liberals lowered 2016 targets to the mid-50s. Alexander’s message is clear: whether they come in as a response to our needs or in a steady stream, skilled immigrants help prop up the economy.

…But during the first debate, none of the candidates addressed how we will make sure those skills are part of the job market. Alexander and Steven Blaney said they would build on Jason Kenney’s work as immigration minister if they came to power. That means providing incentives to businesses, including tax breaks and the ability to let them tell the government what kind of skills they’re looking for, and having discussions with professional associations that often help immigrants gain their credentials. The associations could play a role in both educating new immigrants about how to get accredited and loosening standards for newcomers.

….Finances are one of the barriers for new immigrants, according to the U of T study. Others are a lack of job experience, language barriers, and even “lack of knowledge of Canadian professional ‘lingo.’”

To fill many of the gaps, Erin O’Toole said, Canada relies on migrant workers. Part of the reason is immigrants can’t use their degrees. For O’Toole, there are two steps to a solution. The first is to start a process of recognizing credentials sooner, concurrent with the application, and the second is working with provinces to streamline cross-provincial recognition.

The majority of candidates who spoke to Maclean’sechoed O’Toole’s ideas. Michael Chong added that Canada needs to be “giving immigrants a clear-eyed view of what the credentials are worth in Canada so they know what they will need to transition.” Andrew Scheer said, “If the work was done on the front-end and we were able to bring provinces together, in a lot of cases you wouldn’t need to qualify and re-certify.”

It’s possible they are right, but policy takes a long time to implement—and it takes even longer to figure out whether or not it works. Tolley also says there are barriers governments can’t tackle outside of raising awareness. For example, research shows foreign-sounding names are discriminated against by employers, and there is no policy that helps immigrants retroactively.

Source: Tories want to cut red tape for skilled immigrants. What else is new? – Macleans.ca

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Syrian refugees need better ways to reconnect with their families 

2016/12/20 Leave a comment

One view by Anneke Smit, Gemma Smyth and Jillian Rogin:

We know that in order to bring in more than 25,000 refugees in just a couple of months, complicated files were avoided, as were single young male refugees. Therefore, some of the most vulnerable were not offered resettlement, even when other members of the family were. In the case of the refugees our group is sponsoring, 10 family members were living together for years under one roof in Lebanon. The nuclear family of husband, wife and four young children was selected for resettlement while the other family members – elderly parents, orphaned nephew, and brother aged 18 – were not. Neither was another sibling, her spouse and young children. Given the limited options for family reunification after arrival in Canada, this selective approach is particularly distressing.

As a result, Syrian refugees will have to look to private sponsorship (groups of five, for example) as their only hope for extended family reunification. This process is complex and financially out of reach for most resettled refugees for at least several years. In the case of “our” family, they found in us a sponsor group willing to raise the funds and sponsor their most vulnerable family members. But that shouldn’t have been necessary had the family been resettled together, or if family reunification channels were more expansive.

This “echo effect” of our massive and laudable Syrian resettlement effort is not going away. During the Kosovo refugee resettlement in 1999, Canada allowed for reunification of a wide array of extended family members of Kosovars already in Canada. We can do the same again today. Along with adequate language training, employment support, mental health counselling and other settlement services, reuniting families is a key part of ensuring this was a job well done.

Source: Syrian refugees need better ways to reconnect with their families – The Globe and Mail

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Anti-Semitism Is on the Rise From Both Sides. Just Not How You Think. – Forward.com

2016/12/20 Leave a comment

J.J. Goldberg on left and right-wing antisemitism and the political divide:

In effect, the walls of mutual hostility and suspicion that cut through the American body politic — and, in slightly different form, through the Jewish community — have left much of the public believing that anti-Semitism is a unitary problem that exists over there, on the other side, while they are unable to see the parallel problem on its own side. The denial is not just shortsighted but also dangerous. Both strains of anti-Jewish ideology have been responsible for multiple deadly attacks specifically targeting Jews and Jewish institutions on U.S. soil over the past quarter-century, since the uptick began. In fact, according to my own research via FBI data and online newspaper archives around the country, the two strands, far-right and anti-Israel, are both implicated in roughly the same number of such attacks during that period.

The line separating sharp, activist opposition to Israeli policy from hatred of its existence isn’t always easy to see. Nor is it hard and fast. Fifty years of the Israeli military ruling over millions of Palestinians without citizenship or political rights are generating a time bomb of Western-liberal frustration. Palestinian activists exploit the frustration to pressure Israel and advance their cause. It all becomes devilishly complicated: There’s hatred of Israel because of what it is. There’s also hatred fanned by what Israel does.

At the same time, there’s an element of right-wing American anti-Semitism that is not prejudice but actual policy opposition to the social agenda of the Jewish advocacy community. American Jews have worked in an organized fashion for the past century to promote a set of broadly liberal principles, including pluralism, minority rights, church-state separation and international engagement. Significant strains of conservatism object to some or all of those principles. Some conclude that the Jewish community is their adversary. Others avoid mentioning Jews, fearing they’ll be accused of anti-Semitism.

Here, too, the line between hatred of Jews and opposition to Jewish policy is not impermeable. There are conservative critics of Israeli policy who bridle at the taboo on open criticism and let their disagreements morph into hostility. Like Israeli self-defense, Diaspora Jewish hypersensitivity is sometimes capable of fanning the very hostility it is meant to deter.

Source: Anti-Semitism Is on the Rise From Both Sides. Just Not How You Think. – Opinion – Forward.com

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Americans are convinced by economic report claiming minorities are taking jobs away from whites

2016/12/19 Leave a comment

Good example of how baselines and charting can mislead, as well as feeding popular prejudices:

To start, the report asserts that of the more than 5 million jobs added since November 2007, the pre-recession employment peak, more than half went to Hispanics — a stunning proportion that accounts for four times their share of the labor force that year.

Economic Cycle Research Institute

Disproportionately large gains also occurred among black and Asian workers, according to the report. African Americans accounted for 25 per cent of the job gains, more than double their share of the labour force. Asians accounted for nearly 30 per cent of the gains, about six times their share of the labour force.

But white workers fell behind, the report said. Whites had fewer jobs than they did nine years ago — even though they made up more than 80 per cent of the labour force in 2007.

These stunning statistics were enough to drive many, including the report’s author, to conclude that white economic despair led to Donald Trump’s election victory.

“The shock of the election spoke to a kind of disconnect,” said Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, in an interview with the Post. “There is a huge cohort — you can call it whites, people in rural areas — who weren’t feeling the 5 percent unemployment rate. They weren’t feeling the stock market at new highs. They weren’t feeling a recovery that’s seven, eight years old.”

But other economists pounced on the report after the New York Times columnist, Eduardo Porter, highlighted it in his column. The statistics Porter cited paint too simplistic of a picture, they argued.

Economic Cycle Research Institute

“The implication is there are hundreds of thousands of white people who lost their jobs to blacks, Asians and Hispanics. Yet if you look at the unemployment rate differentials by race, you don’t see a huge increase in the white unemployment rate,” said Jonathan Rothwell, a Gallup economist.

The recession and its aftermath were not dramatically worse for white workers, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for whites — 4.6 per cent in 2015 — is lower than all racial and ethnic groups except Asians. In comparison, 9.6 per cent of African Americans, 6.6 per cent of Hispanics, and 3.8 per cent of Asians are unemployed.

And a far higher proportion of whites are employed than blacks; 59.9 per cent of the white labour force are employed compared to 55.7 per cent of the black labour force. The proportions of Hispanics and Asians who have jobs are just slightly higher than for whites — not nearly the alarming portrait painted by the Economic Cycle Research Institute.

All demographic groups experienced declining rates of employment between 2007 and 2015, but white workers’ plight is not as dramatic as ECRI implies.

“I don’t see any evidence that whites were disproportionately harmed over the last nine years,” Rothwell said. “The main concern I have with the [ECRI] chart is it’s potentially grossly misleading in terms of how it could be interpreted.”

Economic Cycle Research Institute

Rothwell and other economists pointed out that as the country becomes more diverse due to immigration and higher birth rates among minority groups, it only follows that those same groups would make gains in employment along with population.

“One would expect to see jobs shifting. Just as we see more kids going to public schools who are non-white, we would expect to see more adults in the labour force who are non-white, and it’s not any cause for concern,” Rothwell said.

Whites are also aging, and as Baby Boomers retire, the size of the white labor force remains relatively stagnant. The ECRI analysis compares a demographic group’s share of the labor force at a single point in time with the group’s share of job gains since 2007. In doing so, it overlooks the changes in the sizes of the underlying populations over time, said Alan Berube, deputy director at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program.

Source: Americans are convinced by economic report claiming minorities are taking jobs away from whites | National Post

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Preaching the Gospel of Diversity, but Not Following It – The New York Times

2016/12/19 Leave a comment

Some good critical self-examination but need to check in 5 years to assess degree of change:

Many journalists hoped a new era was beginning two and a half years ago, when Baquet became the first African-American to oversee the newsroom. But whatever progress has been made is only beginning to show up on a scorecard. Overall, newsroom diversity is at 22 percent, up slightly but below newsrooms in most big metropolitan areas. And of those who head departments here, only three are people of color.

I asked Baquet what he believes minorities in the newsroom would say about his senior team’s dedication to diversity.

“I think they’d say we have a problem,” he said. “We’re not diverse enough. But I think they’d say I have a commitment to it and that it’s gotten better in the past year.” He added, “My effort to diversify has been intense and persistent.”

By that, Baquet particularly means the handful of prominent black journalists he’s helped attract or promote, stars like Nikole Hannah-Jones, Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham, all coveted by The Times’s competitors.

Their writing styles offer a refreshing break from The Times’s rather institutional voice, which — as one black editor put it to me — is older, white, male, Ivy League and authoritative. “That’s who The Times is at a dinner party,” she said.

Many of those I spoke with, including Latinos and Asians, said the arrival of a few stars can take the focus away from the real issue of bringing in and retaining diversity across the room. In other words, while big names are rightfully celebrated, they can give the appearance of more diversity than there really is.

What’s more, just because an African-American is at the helm, it doesn’t mean all is well in the newsroom he runs. “We can’t look to Dean as proof that everything is O.K., and we also can’t look solely to him for solutions,” said Nikita Stewart, a Metro staff reporter.

When you ask managers about the issue individually, everyone genuinely seems to care. Collectively, however, not much changes.

They begin by saying this is an industrywide problem, not just a New York Times problem. That is true, unquestionably. On the other hand, it’s also true that data from the American Society of News Editors shows that The Times is less diverse than large papers like The Washington Post (31 percent), The Los Angeles Times (34 percent) and The Miami Herald (41 percent). The Times is more diverse than The Boston Globe (17 percent) and The Philadelphia Inquirer (14 percent).

Given The Times’s ambitions across global cultures and languages, it would seem that instead of being a lagger, it would insist on being a leader — and make that an explicit goal. I see no sign that this is happening. Nor do I get the impression from many journalists of color I spoke with that they believe progress is on the horizon.

“There’s always a reason for such little diversity in newsrooms. Over the course of time, the reasons always change, but the underrepresentation never does,” said Hannah-Jones, who writes for the Times Magazine, one of the few notably diverse staffs in the building.

Ernesto Londoño, who sits on The Times’s editorial board — and on an Opinion staff lacking both gender and racial diversity — believes the problem lies in a failure of editors to step outside their white-knows-white circles. “It takes a concerted effort to break out of that habit and tap talent pools that are more diverse,” Londoño said.

Which means that unless the pattern breaks, the whiter the newsroom is, the whiter it will stay.

Mark Thompson, The Times chief executive officer, told a group of top leaders across the corporate and news sides last spring that managers could face dismissal if they failed to diversify their staffs. Baquet, who was at the meeting, didn’t sound that militant in our conversation, saying that his editors feel the most pressure through a stringent expectation to bring forth a diverse applicant pool for every job opening. No one has been punished, he says.

I can tell diversity isn’t a priority here by looking at what is. Think digital transition or global expansion or subscriber growth or visual innovation. Those are mandates that really power up the engines. Diversity is not at that level, at least yet.

This issue has challenged most every newsroom manager, myself included. The newsroom I came from, The Washington Post, is quite diverse, but its leadership is heavily white and male. At The Times, on the other hand, people of color seem shut out of all sorts of coveted jobs: the top digital strategists, the top managers, the precious ranks of cultural critics, the White House press corps, the opinion columnists, the national politics jobs — all are overwhelmingly white.

It is possible to change this. But The Times will need more humility, introspection and openness than has been its habit in the past.

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ICYMI Immigration au Québec: les Syriens détrônent les Français | Pierre-André Normandin | National

2016/12/19 Leave a comment

 

Les données obtenues auprès du ministère de l'Immigration... (Photo Alain Roberge, archives La Presse)

Latest immigration statistics from Quebec showing the impact of Syrian refugees:

Les données obtenues auprès du ministère de l’Immigration du Québec démontrent qu’un nouvel arrivant sur 7 lors du 1er semestre de 2016 était originaire de Syrie.

L’arrivée massive de réfugiés syriens au début de 2016 a profondément modifié le visage de l’immigration au Québec. Les Syriens ont en effet détrôné les Français comme principal groupe d’immigrants, selon les données de l’Institut de la statistique du Québec (ISQ).

Le bilan démographique du Québec, publié aujourd’hui par l’ISQ, dresse le portrait de l’immigration dans la province. Les données obtenues auprès du ministère de l’Immigration du Québec démontrent qu’un nouvel arrivant sur 7 lors du 1er semestre de 2016 était originaire de Syrie.

Il s’agit du principal groupe d’immigrants à s’installer au Québec. Cette proportion est nettement plus forte que la part d’immigration observée en 2015. La Syrie représentait 5,9% de toute l’immigration l’année dernière.

En 2015, le principal groupe d’immigrants provenait de la France. Ceux-ci ont représenté 9,2% de toutes les personnes ayant décidé de quitter leur pays pour s’installer au Québec. L’arrivée des Français dans la belle province ne s’est pas tarie en 2016, au  contraire. Ceux-ci représentaient au premier semestre tout près d’un immigrant sur dix.

Alors que l’immigration en provenance de Syrie augmente rapidement, l’Institut note une baisse du nombre de personnes venant s’établir au Québec en provenance de l’Iran, de l’Algérie et d’Haïti. Ces pays ont longtemps été une importante source d’immigration pour la province.

Le portait de l’immigration au Québec est sensiblement différent de celui du reste du Canada. Les Philippines fournissent le principal contingent d’immigrants pour le pays, suivi par l’Inde. Ces deux pays ne figurent pas parmi les principaux groupes d’immigrants au Québec.

Part de l’immigration par pays

Rang 1er semestre de 2016 2015
1. Syrie: 14,5 % France: 9,2 %
2. France: 9,9 % Chine: 7,4 %
3. Chine: 6,7 % Iran: 7,3 %
4. Iran: 5,2 % Syrie: 5,9 %
5. Haïti: 4,6 % Algérie: 5,5 %
Source: Immigration au Québec: les Syriens détrônent les Français | Pierre-André Normandin | National

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Businesses applaud changes to allow temporary foreign workers to stay as long as permits renewed

2016/12/17 Leave a comment

Yet another reversal of the previous government’s policy but partial  -the caps on company numbers remain with priority to be given to under-represented groups in Canada:

The government announced Tuesday afternoon it will allow migrant workers to continue filling jobs in industries ranging from meat-packing to tourism for as many years as their employers continue to renew their permit – in effect, making the presence of these temporary workers more permanent.

“Many people who fell under this category are people who would return to Canada, again and again and again, year after year,” said Michael Burt, director of industrial economic trends at the Conference Board of Canada. “It’s a positive thing in a sense that, broadly speaking, both employers and TFWs were looking for opportunities to stay in Canada to keep that relationship going.”

After four years of working in Canada, most migrant workers in occupations requiring little or no post-secondary education would then be unable to return here for another four years unless they secured permanent residency through a provincial immigration program.

That “four-in-four-out” policy was created by the Conservative government in 2011 to ensure that jobs filled by temporary foreign workers were truly temporary. It led to thousands of foreign workers remaining in Canada undocumented, and thousands more leaving while employers in industries like agriculture, food processing and hospitality complained of persistent labour shortages.

“It uprooted people who had lived and worked in the country for many, many years,” said Syed Hussan, an organizer with the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, which is calling for permanent residency for temporary foreign workers upon landing.

In many cases, employers proved no Canadians were available for the jobs these workers were leaving behind so they could hire new temporary foreign workers to fill the roles. In others, the four-year limit, combined with other restrictions on the temporary foreign worker program, meant that jobs went unfilled even though employers increased efforts to recruit Canadians.

“It has had the effect of forcing a lot of people to go home that we should really be pursuing to stay in Canada permanently, as opposed to giving them the boot,” said Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Kelly and other industry representatives are hopeful the Liberal government will soon follow through on its promise to develop pathways to permanent residency for lower-skilled workers, who are currently shut out of federal immigration programs.

…Some economists, such as Armine Yalnizyan at the left-wing Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, also support granting permanent residency to more migrant workers. Relying on a permanent stream of temporary workers destabilizes local labour markets by suppressing wages and opportunities for young Canadians, Yalnizyan said.

But others say the removal of the four-year limit blurs the distinctions between permanent and temporary immigration programs, raising questions about the future of Canada’s immigration system.

“What distinguishes the two streams now, when the idea of ‘temporary’ is taken out of the equation by removing the amount of time they can spend in Canada?” said Colin Busby, associate director of research at the C.D. Howe Institute.

It is unclear how Canada will balance taking in a large number of temporary foreign workers permanently with the permanent immigration system’s traditional focus on high-skilled workers to meet Canada’s long-term economic needs, Busby added.

But, for many in the agricultural sector, including Portia MacDonald-Dewhirst, executive director of the Canadian Agricultural Human Resources Council, long-term economic and social integration of temporary workers is precisely the point.

“There should be opportunities for them and pathways to become Canadian citizens,” she said.

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‘Extraordinary initiative’: Canada’s private refugee sponsorship system exported as model for the world 

2016/12/17 Leave a comment

While I am always cautious in exporting any Canadian “model,” as local conditions, history, geographies and identities vary, nevertheless good to share our experience and lessons learned with others (and likewise, learn from them):

The world could make strides in resolving the global refugee crisis by adopting Canada’s private sponsorship model, says Immigration Minister John McCallum.

Speaking at a news conference to officially launch the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative, which will train and advise other countries on how to establish programs that allow private individuals and groups to finance, facilitate and support refugees coming to the country, McCallum urged other countries to do more.

“I think one aspect of this crisis today is that there are not enough countries receiving enough refugees to solve the problem, to put it mildly,” he said. “So I do believe this initiative, which is essentially to export to interested countries in the rest of the world our privately sponsored refugees [program], could make a significant impact on the refugee crisis.”

Participants from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Germany, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. are in Ottawa for a three-day session on how Canada’s program could be replicated in their own countries. About 90 international delegates are attending.

Canada is dedicating six staff to spearhead the initiative to get the greatest “buy in” from other countries.

McCallum said the world is seeing the worst refugee crisis in decades, and a growing number of countries are keen to embrace Canada’s project as a way to help. Engaging citizens will boost public support for newcomers, and help refugees integrate with greater ease and success.

According to the department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the private refugee sponsorship program has helped resettle more than 288,000 refugees since the late 1970s.

More than 13,000 Syrian refugees have been resettled in Canada through private sponsorship since November 2015.

1.2 million refugees in life-threatening situations

In March, Canada’s government-assisted and private sponsorship of refugees was hailed as a model for the world by Filippo Grandi, the head of the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Johannes Van Der Klaauw, the agency’s representative in Canada, said today there are now 1.2 million refugees who are in life-threatening situations. He urged other countries to follow Canada’s lead to encourage private sponsors to complement government-assisted programs.

Gregory Maniatis, an international resettlement expert with Open Society Foundations, called Canada’s program an extraordinary initiative.

While there are many obstacles, including many governments around the world, he said there is a groundswell of grassroots support from citizens.

“If you look at what’s happening on the ground, amongst citizens….we think and we have seen, a tremendous desire to help,” he said.

McCallum said while Canada is a very welcoming country compared to others, it is not universally so. He said to stem potential resentment, the government is always careful to ensure refugees are not seen to be treated better than other Canadians when it comes to social housing, health or other benefits.

“We have to ensure that the way we behave is fair. Fair to refugees, but also to Canadians,” he said.

The Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative is led by the federal government, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the University of Ottawa, the Radcliffe Foundation and the Open Society Foundations

Source: ‘Extraordinary initiative’: Canada’s private refugee sponsorship system exported as model for the world – Politics – CBC News

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